


reverie

by bokutoma



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Love, My Unit | Byleth Has Emotions, My Unit | Byleth Is Doing Their Best, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Other, Regret, seteth typical repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29072703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma
Summary: faced with the looming end of the war and several hard decisions, byleth looks to the man they can trust above all for guidance.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Seteth
Kudos: 9
Collections: Courage My Love: A Setleth Zine





	reverie

**Author's Note:**

> written for the setleth zine [courage, my love](https://twitter.com/setlethzine). this was so much fun!!

For many a day now, Byleth has wondered if this is their fault.

Not the war itself, of course. That would be far more egotistical than is in their nature, even if they are beginning to feel more…  _ normal,  _ if that’s a word that can even be applied to them in any situation. Edelgard, though, had been their responsibility once upon a time, a charge in their care, one that had respected them, perhaps even befriended them to some degree. Without Edelgard, those who slither in the dark no longer would have pressed their agenda further, to be certain, but perhaps she could have stood with them, with the rest of the friends she had only just begun to make.

It’s hard not to feel like a failure when the true path of this chapter in history has strayed so far from that ideal.

So they seek the one person that would understand, who has seen more than one chapter pass and has always had the best of advice, even when he railed against their acquisition of a teaching position. (Had that not been sound advice as well?) Perhaps Hanneman or Manuela would have something to say as well, but in this, Byleth trusts their heart.

It leads them to Seteth.

“Professor,” he says, formal even now, but exhaustion beats at the carefully constructed cage of his velvet-lined voice. If he is always in control of himself, then that most dependable of qualities is slipping. Perhaps it should make them nervous, make them believe that the end is nigh, make them lose faith in the man that helped construct it. It doesn’t.

“It’s really not fair that you don’t have a proper title so I can respond in kind.”

From the truly magnificent pursing of his lips, they deduce he isn’t impressed that they’ve learned how to crack jokes. “Have you just come here to remind me of certain troublemakers in their school days, or did you have matters of actual importance to speak with me about?”

Is it a bad sign that they can’t figure out who he’s talking about? There had been so many, after all. 

Regardless, reminiscing hadn’t been their goal; dreams were to be their poison of choice for the evening, and they hoped that against all evidence, Seteth would indulge with them.

“Do you have time to just… talk?”

Maybe there’s something in their face that speaks to the need that underscores this most basic of questions, or maybe he reads it in the subtle flex of their hands. Once given time and motive to understand them properly, he’d become almost as adept at reading the minuscule nuances of their expressions as family proper. 

If there is hope in that thought, then they put it to bed for now. This is neither the time nor the place, and they haven’t come here to moon about, though they’re certain that would give the man in front of them quite the shock.

“Certainly,” he says, settling behind that imposing desk, and as they take the chair across from them, something about the situation makes them feel like they’re about to be scolded, and they have to dismiss the errant feeling before it can bloom into something stronger. There’s no disappointment or irritation in the familiar lines of his face, after all; if anything, there is understanding in that gentle green gaze, and this too they must shake off, or risk choking up before they can even speak. “You’re always welcome where I am.”

Really, there should be rules against being that kind. Still, they are too far off track. “Do you think we could have saved them?”

He does not have to ask who they mean. He does anyway. “Edelgard and Hubert?”

“Who else?” There is no humor in their voice, now just as flat as it had been on the day they’d arrived at Garreg Mach. They’d tried for that laughter here, at least, when it could have made some iota of sense, but new teachings fall away fast in the face of such misery, and this particular breed plagues them like the fires of Ailell. 

Seteth sighs, and in that single breath is all the misery of millennia. He had told them of his nature, after all, and of Flayn and Rhea’s, and the impossible standards they had thought he exacted upon the students of the monastery began to shape into something that made altogether too much sense. He had never been unfair, after all, at least not where it counted, just desperate for a standard that even he could not achieve.

They think they understand that in some regards. It isn’t so different from their own desperate struggles to be better than their own nature, after all.

“No,” he says, and the answer is absolution and damnation both. “They made their own choices, after all.”

Even with this honest truth in them, they can’t help but want combat, however. “And wasn’t it our responsibility as their educators to ensure they made the right choices?”

“You can’t make someone choose the right path, professor.” He says it with the heaviness of a man who knows this from personal experience, and they suppose he really does have all of time to back up this assertion. It makes a pointless argument even more futile, and they’re grateful for it, for the steady mountain of his soul that they can lean their own against. “They made the best decision they felt they could. Even those two might have felt some measure of justice in their actions. I suppose we’ll never really know now.”

That doesn’t bat the guilt away like so much colorless smoke, but they really hadn’t expected it to. It hadn’t even been the meat of the questions that plague them, and if they let it, they could sit here for hours with him, searching for the warmth they know lies behind that stern facade. Only necessity keeps them from following through.

He fiddles with a book on his desk, the pages well-worn and yellowing. Before he’d confessed the truth, they assumed it to be another antique, a collectible item that only emphasized his vested interest in the church. Now they know better, and a first edition became  _ the  _ first edition of the Book of Seiros, perhaps the only surviving copy of the original edition. Unedited, unmoored from time… What might it feel like to be the same way?

“Sometimes I wish I had never come here,” they confess. What they had expected in response, they aren’t certain, but Seteth shows no surprise. “I wish I didn’t have to feel so much all the time. I didn’t, once. I want to go back to those days.”

“I could hardly blame you if you did.”

“You say that like you know my mind better than I do.” But, Byleth thinks, perhaps he does. “What do you think it means to be human, then, if you know so much?”

“Do you mean fallible?” Seteth’s laugh is dry, the kind of sandpaper scraping against their skin that they might have expected before they really got to know him. “I’m not supposed to know the answer to that question.”

“Because you’re Seteth, the mighty administrator?”

That elicits another coarse brush of his voice against every inch of them, and it sends an unfamiliar thrill down their spine. “Because I’m a saint.”

“Cichol, is it? You’re not exactly a magic aficionado, and I can’t really see you wielding a bow with much vigor either.”

For a long moment, there is silence, and Byleth wonders if they have crossed some unknowable line again, if they have offended without meaning to in the way they so often had until their stay at the monastery.

Seteth does not look upset, however. If anything, he seems… amazed? His lips quirk into a vaguely bewildered smile, but if they are reading him right (and they do, these days), he seems more fond than anything else.

“And how long were you going to sit on the fact that you already knew my most closely guarded secret?” he asks, and if there is any outrage sharpening that richly textured voice, then it is smoothed over tenfold by the laughter present as well. “Or are you going to tell me that was a lucky guess, just as Rhea’s identity was?”

They shrug, but a matching smile graces their own face, and when they lean across the desk and brush their hand against his, he takes it like it’s commonplace for them to be so affectionate. “Maybe you’ve made me into a model professor after all.”

“That was all your doing, professor.”

For a moment, they relish the quiet calm of this time they’ve carved for themselves, one of few that comes without interruption by war or its side effects. For a moment, they can just be two people who have found each other despite a thousand odds stacked against them. For a moment, they can just be  _ two people _ .

It’s a nice feeling.

“Thank you,” they say, though it comes out more like a whisper in their effort to keep the waters of these fragile few seconds still. “For taking a chance on me. For teaching me how to be human, even if you didn’t mean to. I’m glad you can tell me your secrets.”

He squeezes their hand, and if there had not been a war outside these doors, one that required them to think of nothing but stratagems and resource management, Byleth thinks he might have kissed them. 

They know they would have kissed him back.

As it is, there is enough love in his eyes to more than make up for what could have been. “Not as glad as I am that you’re here to share them with.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/kingblaiddyd)


End file.
